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Prologue

Prologue

Austrian, the Habsburg Domain

The early 1800s had been a time of both loss, and gain for the Habsburg monarchy. For one, it had featured almost constant warfare with Napoleon, and his French Empire with the Holy Roman Empire finally dying when Emperor Francis II finally dissolved it in fear of Napoleon becoming Holy Roman Emperor. However, once Napoleon was defeated it saw the immediate resurgence of the power that the Hapsburgs had lost. The Congress of Vienna, dominated by the Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich, gave the Habsburg monarchy, now reigning not as the Holy Roman Emperors but as the Austrian Emperors, the domination of the German Confederation (Deutscher Bund) and an important place in Europe.

After the Congress of Vienna, the Austrian Empire assumed an important place within the European political landscape, and it flourished during the so-called “Age of Conservatism”. But, as the 1830s began rumbles of change sounded throughout Europe: the growing ideology of Liberalism, the July Revolution in France, and revolutions in Italy, Poland, and, above all Belgium. By 1836 the bliss in which monarchies had reigned in during the Age of Conservatism was gone, and instead clouds were gathering on the horizon. However, the very nature of these clouds was still up for debate; could they be a resurgence of the Age of Conservatism, could they be an emergence of a new liberal European order, or could they even be the beginning of an age in which Europe would be under the yoke of the Proletariat Dictatorship of socialism.

Welcome to "Austrian, 1836-1935". As the title suggests this is a GC Austria game, and it will be a history style game with me playing in a plausible manner, but not a historical manner. I have set out no goals, and this is not a game to win, or even to become a superpower, but rather play a history driven plausibe game as Austria.

Rules

- Hard/ Agressive
- No world conquest, or wars without a plausible casus belli, though there can be agressive wars of conquests
- no reloading, unless theres an unintentional error
- everything done must be plausible, and driven by something other than me just wanting to do it
- random events that happen in game must shape policy, such as with whom I ally with (in case of the "Peace Confrence" event), and can be a casus belli (in case of "Smuggling" event)

Right now this is a pure Vanilla game, for I don't have the technical skill to mod the game, but if one has any events that I may borrow for this game, please let me for events will drive this AAR.

The writing style will also flucuate depending on what I wish to show, during war and large game events I'll probably have a largly "I do this, and I do that" highly technical style writing, during periods of planning and intrigue I'll do character based dialogue, but I'll always back those up with a history book style of writing. Also, when I write please do give me feed back (esspecially for dialogue) for I want to make this as pleasent to read as possible while improving my own writing (if theres a critism one wouldn't like to put on the board in fear of flames please pm me).

If readers reply to the events happening in my AAR I will use them as advice from the aristocracy, parliament, or the ruling body of Austria at the time to make my decisions. So please do give your advice and I will have that help shape my decisions. Also, if you wish to have your opinions be shown with a character within the AAR just put down what that character would be. I'm in need of characters like that so please do choose to do that.

State of Affairs, 1936

Meeting of the Austrian Cabinet, January 5th 1836State of Affairs, 1836

Greetings members of the Cabinet of His Imperial Majesty Ferdinand II, as you all know you are all summoned to Vienna once every four years in order to discuss the current state of affairs of Austria. For those who do not recognize me, I am Klemens von Metternich and I, at the behalf of His Imperial Majesty, lead the cabinet in matters both foreign, and internal. Anyways, it is time for me to present to you the State of Affairs address.

As we all know, Austria is a Monarchy, lead by the Habsburg dynasty, and it is lead by Metternich’s Faction, which is one’s basic conservative party. The political structure we have is one that allows the true leaders of a nation, those of the aristocracy, to lead the nation without having to worry about being elected. As such, we have a state press, can ban parties, and do not allow workers unions to ensure that we can control our people without revolutionary sentiments taking hold.

Austria herself is a massive empire comprising of many tongues and cultures, the two most major are the South Germans and Hungarians, and we dominate Central Europe. The regions that we control include: Austria, Bohemia, Croatia, Hungary, Northern Italy, Romania, and Silesia, and our major centers of industry are: Bergamo, Bruno, Graz, Kecskems, Linz, Palo, and Wien. We don’t have a great many railroads and we are just beginning to experiment with the technology in Wien, where it has impressed His Imperial Majesty. Although I emphasize that we Austrians ought to remain a primarily agrarian nation, there has been created a new committee within the Austrian government, the Imperial Committee of the Economy, to oversee the further building of factories and railroads, though we do encourage entrepreneurs to also do so.

Another matter to be approached is that of our foreign relations. It is imperative that we remain the dominant power in both the Italian peninsula, and Germany. In Italy, we shall send diplomats to both the Papal States, and the Two Sicillies to make allies of both so that can intervene if either is threatened by an Italian nationalist revolt. In Germany, we already have alliances with all of the German Confederation states and therefore diplomats need not be sent to the many states. However, this does not mean that we should lower our guard when it comes to our control of Germany for there is another powerful state in the German Confederation: Prussia. It is a powerful state and it might decide unify Germany under its banner, and the reign of the Hohenzollerns. However, if it decides to do so we must oppose Prussia in every way and war must be one of our primary options in this situation! At this point we are allies, but that might change even tomorrow and we have to keep our guard up at all times.

The Austrian military must be strengthened if we are to remain the primary player in German and Italian affairs, and our current standing army of 11 divisions is not enough! Of those 11 divisions most of them, 7 divisions, stationed in Milano, 2 in Lviv, and 2 in Wien and at this point 3 of the divisions in Milano are marching to Praha so that we may have divisions towards the Austro-Prussian border in Silesia. However, our primary military predicament is that we have no divisions in reserve, and it is planned to increase the mobilization pool to 16 divisions by 1850.

The Ministry of Finances has also been instructed to set the taxation rates to 46% for the poor, 42% for the Middle Classes, and 15% for the Higher Classes. This is set so that we may receive enough taxation revenues from our people while allowing the Higher Classes to devote their efforts towards the State without having to worry about taxes. There will also be a tariffs set to protect the Austrian economy from too much cheap, foreign competition, but they will not be too high that we will stifle Austria’s trading in foreign markets.

Thank-you for giving me your attention, and if there are any questions or comments among the cabinet they may be stated now.

It all started with the Opera riot, but when the Belgians declared their sovereignty quickly after the July Revolution in France the façade of conservative bliss came crashing down in Europe. With the memory of the Napoleonic Wars still seared in the mind of Europe, reaction to the revolution was varied: France, who had a new liberal monarch after the July Revolution, decided to support their Belgians while the other European powers, for different reasons, decided to support the Dutch is suppressing the revolts.

A romanticist view of the revolts in Belgium.

However, by 1836 the situation became increasingly bright for the independence of Belgium as, although the Dutch continued to hold significant territory in Belgium, more European powers began to support their plight. It seemed only a matter of time until the Belgians received their independence.

Belgian Revolution in January, 1836.

However, combat continued as the Dutch, though little hope remained for their victory, stubbornly fought against the Belgians in order to stop their revolution. Eventually, though, the Netherlands capitulated to an agreement of Belgian in the Treaty of London with the British, and French who both agreed to guarantee Belgian independence. But, Austria, and Prussia both decided to not sign the treaty with the belief that it was the Dutch monarch who was the legitimate ruler of Belgium.

Nice. I like the history book style and the goals; in my opinion, "Let's play a plausible game" is better than "'n tehn i teh pwnzor cpatrued all of Erth wit my 120-divssion stcaks of calvary LOLOL LMAOnaise," with all due respect to the latter.

The writing's great, and the various German states have always been my favorites. Might you try to beat back the Prussians and perhaps incorporate the South German Federation into your resurgent Habsburg Empire?

Yeah, at long last a(nother) promising AAustRian! I like your goals very much, like GregoryTheBruce pointed out already. There are many WC AARs out there that show armies moving on the map. And then there's AARs where the player restricts himself to a more historically appropriate gameplay - and these are always the more interesting (for me, at least).

Do you plan on, besides putting Prussia in the second place across German lands and watching Italy, colonizing anything? Not very historical, but if you can overcome the interior problems that hampered Austria's efforts during V:R's timespan, the option of colonization is not so unrealistically!

Thank-you all for your support, and intrest in my Austrian AAR. There will be a major update today that'll truly show what I mean by "Event-Driven AAR".

Originally Posted by GregoryTheBruce

The writing's great, and the various German states have always been my favorites. Might you try to beat back the Prussians and perhaps incorporate the South German Federation into your resurgent Habsburg Empire?

Well that depends on what the Bavarians do, and what happens in Germany. However, thats an idea that the Reactionaries are probably more open to then the Conservatives but the Conservatives are in power.

Originally Posted by Rensslaer

Best wishes with this! I'd definitely counsel an aggressive stance toward Prussia -- put them in their place!

When the time comes, the Prussians will learn to bow down to the true rulers of a very much disunified Germany!

Originally Posted by rhynoclemmis

Do you plan on, besides putting Prussia in the second place across German lands and watching Italy, colonizing anything? Not very historical, but if you can overcome the interior problems that hampered Austria's efforts during V:R's timespan, the option of colonization is not so unrealistically!

I can't promise anything right now, but I'll try to put Austrian white on the African savannah.

Chapter II

Chapter IIDeath of a Titan

1836 was a good year for Austria, the railroad from Wien was extended to Brno, and Graz, two new Imperial Guard infantry divisions were being recruited from the cream of the volunteers flocking to the service of the Emperor, the mobilization reserve had been increased to four divisions, and our relations to the Papal states has become friendly with an alliance in the near future. The year of 1836 was a relatively clam year for Europe as there were no ground breaking events that shook the continent after the Treaty of London ended the Belgian Revolution. Metternich was at the center of all Austrian government matters, advocating an aggressive foreign policy against those who threatened the priorities of the Habsburgs.

Klemens von Metternich, the most powerful man in Austria.

However, despite the fact Austria strengthened its power in the south; Metternich saw a greater need to either enter an alliance, or to cripple the growing power of Sardinia-Piedmont. In order to diplomatically approach Sardinia-Piedmont Metternich decided to personally go to Torino, and a diplomatic trip was planned for July 1837. When Metternich traveled to Torino, many were skeptical, with the memory of Austrian soldiers putting down the 1830 revolutions still burning in their heads, of the Austrian’s motives. For the first two days of the conference the situation was controlled but during the third a mob had assembled in the center of Torino, and when the Piedmont army had to be summoned to put down the protests the situation spun out of control. For two days Metternich stayed in the palace but, eventually the protests were suppressed and it was time for Metternich to leave. With a military escort Metternich’s carriage reached the city center where it caught the eye of an anarchist bomb thrower who was there waiting for the carriage. When the dust cleared Metternich, archangel of conservatism, was mortally wounded and hours later he succumbed to his wounds.

Alexander von Bach, Metternich's immediate successor.

When news reached Wien the aristocracy was stunned, Alexander von Bach assumed control of the government, and the populace waited for the government’s reaction……………..